Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts eBook

Outside we took the westward road, and our horses
broke into a trot. As yet we had not exchanged
a word; but now he asked a question or two about his
people and his friends; kindly, yet most casually,
as one might who returns after a week’s holidaying.
I answered as well as I could, with trivial news
of their health. His mother had borne the winter
better than usual—­to be sure, there had
been as yet no cold weather to speak of; but she and
Ethel intended, I believed, to start for the south
of France early in February. He inquired about
you. His comments were such as a man makes on
hearing just what he expects to hear, or knows beforehand.
And for some time it seemed to be tacitly taken for
granted between us that I should ask him no questions.

“As for me—­” I began, after
a while.

He checked the mare’s pace a little. “I
know,” he said, looking straight ahead between
her ears; then, after a pause, “it has been a
bad time for you, You are in a bad way altogether.
That is why I came.”

“But it was for you!” I blurted
out. “Harry, if only I had known why you
were taken—­and what it was to you!”

He turned his face to me with the old confident comforting
smile.

“Don’t you trouble about that.
That’s nothing to make a fuss about.
Death?” he went on musing—­our horses
had fallen to a walk again—­ “It looks
you in the face a moment: you put out your hands:
you touch—­ and so it is gone. My
dear boy, it isn’t for us that you need worry.”

“For whom, then?”

“Come,” said he, and he shook Vivandiere
into a canter.

III

I cannot remember precisely at what point in our ride
the country had ceased to be familiar. But by-and-by
we were climbing the lower slopes of a great down
which bore no resemblance to the pastoral country around
Sevenhays. We had left the beaten road for short
turf—­apparently of a copper-brown hue,
but this may have been the effect of the moonlight.
The ground rose steadily, but with an easy inclination,
and we climbed with the wind at our backs; climbed,
as it seemed, for an hour, or maybe two, at a footpace,
keeping silence. The happiness of having Harry
beside me took away all desire for speech.

This at least was my state of mind as we mounted the
long lower slopes of the down. But in time the
air, hitherto so exhilarating, began to oppress my
lungs, and the tranquil happiness to give way to a
vague discomfort and apprehension.

“What is this noise of water running?”

I reined up Grey Sultan as I put the question.
At the same moment it occurred to me that this sound
of water, distant and continuous, had been running
in my ear for a long while.

Harry, too, came to a halt. With a sweep of
the arm that embraced the dim landscape around and
ahead, he quoted softly—­